All Gens Established Old Generations

Looking at the debate regarding BW, and the discussions I've had over discord, it seems to me that fundamentally one of the major differences between people is what they consider an established old generation. The vote we should have on BW will be on whether or not we consider it an established old generation, so it's vitally important that we discuss this before having a vote.

Obviously, this thread is going to be highly opinion-based, there is no right or wrong answers here, I just wish to share my opinion, and read through all of yours, and I hope that all of you do the same

---

My personal opinion is that an established old generation is one which, firstly, has been around a few years (obviously), and is one where people don't at all often complain about the ruleset, the ruleset hasn't undergone any major changes recently on Smogon. With regards to BW specifically, clearly it has been around for long enough, and the ruleset hasn't changed in a while (not really sure if it's long enough) but to me there are still too many doubts about the metagame for it to really be considered sufficiently established for use on PP. For example Ninjax was complaining earlier that Latios should be banned, over discord. And some people saying that in some way or another, stoutland sand should be legal etc. which I think is a bit complicated to figure out really... yeah. I don't think it's agreed upon sufficiently strongly for long enough of a time to be considered established.

 

I think the basics are agreed upon. Some old and important issues are now settled. Excadrill should be legal, Chorophyll sun badly constrained the meta and should be banned. Magic gaurd is more controversial but at this point its hard to seriously argue for a Magic Gaurd ban. Lets take a look at the smogon viability rankings: Gen 5 - BW Viability Ranking, mk. 2 | Smogon Forums . Alakazam isn't in S and Reuniculus is in A-. Neither pokemon is broken (though Zam is a very good pokemon). Volcarona is also in A-.

From my perspective the only serious controversy is Latios. However I think the situation with gen5 latios is fairly similar to the situation of gen4 Latias. Both pokemon are fairly centrlazing but the tier can handle them. Many of the common Lati@s counters/checks in gen4 are legal and common in gen4 (Tyranitar, Jirachi, Scizor, Blissey etc). However, for historical reasons, one of them is banned and the other is not. You still see plenty of discussions on smogon about whether banning Latias was a mistake or not. I will note that on smogon there is no serious effort to get Latios banned, even if there are several people complaining about it.

Stoutland has always been a minor pokemon in BW OU. When it was legal it didn't see heavy play. Whether PP allows stoutland is not a critical question. However stoutland is definitely not broken. It wasn't broken when it was legal and is only banned to keep the ruleset simple.

Many of the perceived issues in BW date to previous metagames. In the past you cold run Chorophyll sun and better rain abusers (such as Torn-T). The metagame is in a good place right now and has been for several years. I think it is a good choice to consider BW established. You could make some minor changes (for example allowing stoutland sand) but there shouldn't be any major bans/unbans. The metagame is already quite diverse.

I suggest watching the SPL matches from this season to get a feel for the current metagame.

 

The thing is, all of these arguments refer to a moment in time. There have been issues not too long ago and there's no reason to believe there probably won't be in the future because it hasn't had years of evidence suggesting that it's a strong metagame.

Furthermore, when you say that people agree on the basics that's just untrue, as none of the common complaints about BW are in any way minor- taking action to address them would significantly alter the metagame. Also the section I underlined I felt was notable because it's factually incorrect- the Exca/Chlorophyll changes took place what, last year? Around WCoP iirc. That demonstrates that all has not been well and there has been some need for change in that time.

Interesting point on gen 4 Latias, although I'm thinking in the opposite direction you were probably intending (reconsider gen 4 lol).

====
Really though I think the biggest issue is that we're forcing a choice between the tier a lot of people want and having a legitimate tiering project. We should be catering for both OU and our own 1U (if they're different), as there's no substantial reason we can't support both (besides extra hosting requirements I guess). If the issue is catering for another community's tiers looking bad, just rebrand them as "[gen] classic" ez. That can't be a worse look than actually using them and pretending that they're our own.

I'm just fucking sick of fighting an uphill battle and trying to get people to accept things they don't want, but at the same time I will not accept a tiering system that is bullshit, which is what I consider OU with its arbitrary, untested banlist to be. 1U and OU must be separated.

 

(this probably isn't a bad idea)

I guess this is an option. Whether or not to have seasons for these is a good question tho.

I'll add BW / ORAS / SM Classic to:
All Gens - Pokemon Perfect Alternative Tiers | Pokémon Perfect

Personally I'm not sure how to support them and balance that with support of our own tiers but it's a reasonable conversation to have.

 

I think that is the only way to go if so many players keep seeing the PP community as just another place to play their non-SM tiers.
You summed it up perfectly, I've started to feel like I'm talking against walls with my arguments because no matter how explicitly the tiering policy states that we need to make our own tier, PP will always be overrun by old Smogon players who just want to play their OU.
Idec about Seasons, we can decide on that later but ffs there are a lot of people who want to try tiering Gen 5 and we should start doing that regardless of what the "majority" likes to play in their Master Tournaments.

 

To be honest to me I kind of feel like we should just straight up say: BW seems pretty retierable, and BW OU isn't stable enough for long enough. Therefore we are obliged to make a new BW 1U.

Every older generation than BW has only had fringe complaints or a very small number of more serious complaints and have been that way for several years. Same cannot be said of BW.

 

GSC OU is a known broken meta with at least three alternatives promoted as better by various players (unban everything, ban Lax, ban Lax + Electrics) and one historical alternative (unban Celebi).

"Established old gens" is a load of shit anyway; it shouldn't matter what we consider one because the term has no place in the tiering policy. RBY OU's an outlier because a) Mewtwo and Mew are so clearly better than everything else it's not funny (they have the highest BSTs, one of the best typings, and are the only things in the game to get instant recovery + setup), b) some level of centralisation is recognised as unavoidable due to simple lack of candidates, and 2-3 of the top 4 have the nice trait, rare in later gens, of not being particularly centralising despite their ubiquity.

(Centralisation generally comes from setup sweepers and broad-spectrum walls; leads and pseudo-leads have a lesser potential to centralise, and wallbreakers and straight attackers are generally fairly benign even when they're ubiquitous. RBY OU is centralised to a decent extent by Chansey - a broad-spectrum wall - and to a very small extent by Exeggutor due to its role in the opening. Tauros and Snorlax are benign as the answer to both is "attrition" and almost anything can do it.)

 

The established old gens thing isn't really about tiering policy or the metas being as good as they can possibly be already. If we were to re-tier these established metas using PP's policies and philosophies on tiering I find it very unlikely we would end up with the same tier. The point is that this is a site mainly for old gens and the tournaments on the site are the main drawing factor to it. Changing up these tiers is a great way to alienate players and reduce this site to only a few dedicated users. I don't think that's worth it no matter how great it sounds to have our own tiers.

I think most people would agree that no tier is perfect as it is and that we could probably make better tiers if we put our minds to it, but the vast majority of people who play old metas do so because they love them, and won't be willing to learn new metas in old gens as a result. It's about what's practical for growing this site. If we want to be a niche site then changing up those metas is fine but if we want to grow, it's out of the question. I think the idea of having classic metas and making our own tiers is totally fine and could even be a really fun project. Just as long as we continue hosting tournaments and offer discussion of the classic metas.

TL DR; I love the community here but I would personally leave this site if ADV OU wasn't offered and I'm almost certain I'm in the vast majority of ADV players when I say that, and I'd be willing to bet the same is true for other old gens.

 

Has anyone other than Jorgen even called for any of these in recent memory?

Latias is the only one anyone has said unironically (ok bkc said mence one time but pretty sure he took it back...)

Also I agree pretty strongly with Dan. With regards to that though I'm still not convinced we should start with BW OU as BW 1U. Pretty simply, I don't think it's been around, with the same ruleset for long enough, with enough agreement from the players, to go with it.

 

Me, Enigami, Ortheore, James G, Lutra.

 

Enigami isn't an experienced GSC player, and I'm not sure you / Ortheore are either. James doesn't really mind too much what rules he plays under, but he's the kind of anti-ban player who thinks OHKO Ubers is a good thing, I don't even recollect Lutra suggesting anything...

So we have Jame$ G who is super anti-ban in general, Jorgen who wanted Lax gone, a few players with less experience or mastery of the tier proposing a bunch of alternatives, I'm not sure what Lutra wants, and every other player (speaking about the top end in terms of ability at GSC) strongly advocates against change if you press them on it. I guess it's not really a small number of serious complaints, maybe a rather larger number, but the complaints are mostly from people w/ less experience at the tier, and the rest of the playerbase strongly opposes change. Maybe I have to amend what I said a little, but the fierce advocacy of the ruleset by a strong majority of the best players, combined with the tier being the same for around a decade...

We need to find the right balance between establishing our own tiers and integrating established metagames. I'm personally satisfied with the states of every decided generation now [i.e. everything bar BW I don't want to change 1U in any drastic fashion] and BW is sort of a tipping point: has it been around long enough to be considered established? There is a diversity of opinions.

 

I have raised the point that retaining GSC OU as something other than 1U achieves both goals. More times than I can count. Every single time you have either ignored the point or hidden behind a poll. I am both frustrated and bemused, as your actions regarding this matter make little sense, yet you do not reek of petty spite as do most others who act incomprehensibly.

 

Ortheore I think we're ready now to have a vote on BW. I propose it being a simple majority vote but players are required to write some sort of reasnoning in their post.

 

Written reasoning seems super sketchy to me. What criteria are we judging them by? How can we ensure that the people judging are doing so fairly? Or is it just that people can have any sort of reasoning?

I'm still in favour of a supermajority, as designating an established old gen is to basically allow it to totally fly in the face of everything else in our tiering philosophy and so it should not be done unless there is overwhelming support for it

 

I'd say just having any sort of reasoning will do. People have a very wide variety of opinions, and it's good to see that variety of opinions, even if we might strongly agree with their stances.

Alright I think I agree, let's do a 2/3 supermajority maybe?

 

If the vote goes 65% "Smogon OU" and 35% "Re tier from scratch" I don't think this issue is going to stay settled for long. Lots of people will be upset. I would just do a majority vote.

Also I agree with this:

"I think at this point the only way to go is 1U = OU in gens 2-5 for now, start the tiering processes from "1R" (Ubers) treating them like a lower tier meta and continually work at them until the 1Rs' bans either match up with OU/1U, or reaches a good point that players agree for 1R to take over as 1U."

One can always test create a 1R metagame for BW. Very few people play BW ubers (its a broken metagame anyway). If BW 1R becomes popular and widely considered a great metagame then we can switch the metagame we use in the BW tours.

 

Hmm...

maybe if we make the original OU '1X' or something instead, so that it's below 1U... well. If we do that then it's just preserving it in the tiering system but not making it a point of focus. The old metagame should not be 1U if it's being preserved in the tiering system, it should be 1X or something else below U. The 1X tier would not have a place in official seasons up to that point or anything, but should BW 1U not be sufficiently stable / balanced by the time a major tournament rolls around then 1X can be used in its place. How does that sound as a compromise? Also, disagree BW Ubers is that broken. I think with a ban or two it would be fine.